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This is a scene from an ammunitions dump explosion near Concord that killed 320 men in 1944. It was considered the worst World War II-related disaster in the United States. (CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO)

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This is a scene from an ammunitions dump explosion near Concord that killed 320 men in 1944. It was considered the worst World War II-related disaster in the United States. (CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO)

Photo: HANDOUT

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Automibiles parked near the dock area at Port Chicago were blown apart when two munitions ships exploded on July 17, 1944, causing tremendous damage at the Post Chicago Naval Ammunition Depot and killing 323 men.
(AP LASERPHOTO) less

Automibiles parked near the dock area at Port Chicago were blown apart when two munitions ships exploded on July 17, 1944, causing tremendous damage at the Post Chicago Naval Ammunition Depot and killing 323 ... more

Photo: HANDOUT

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In Search of Justice / Black sailors scapegoated for the blast in 1944 at Port Chicago seek redress

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Stained in glass on a chapel wall, the racist history of military facilities at Port Chicago is portrayed in a simple scene showing black sailors straining to lift boxes of dynamite.

Percy Robinson came back yesterday to the site of the worst home port disaster of World War II to reveal a secret. He was one of them.

"This was extra duty for us," he recalled in a reedy voice as he described the window, which is based on an official Navy photo. "They said we hadn't been working hard enough. This wasn't part of our regular job, but it was that day."

His commanding officers said he was lazy. The U.S. Navy branded him a criminal. But now Percy Robinson had returned to Port Chicago to demand justice.

"President Clinton, I am asking you for the sake of my family and the history of the country, clear my record," the 73-year-old man said as a chill wind blew outside the Port Chicago Memorial Chapel.

Joined by 10 of his fellow black survivors and their families at Port Chicago, which is now part of the Concord Naval Weapons Station, Robinson remembered the 320 servicemen killed when two ships loaded with munitions exploded on July 17, 1944.

More than 200 of the victims were black, assigned to the menial and dangerous job of handling high explosives and munitions in what Navy officials have acknowledged was a pattern of racial discrimination.

Robinson was one of 258 men who ini-

tially refused to return to work at Port Chicago after the July 1944 catastrophe. Threatened with a firing squad, he returned to the dangerous duty at the base but was later convicted in a summary court martial and spent 38 days in a Navy brig.

Fifty other men held out and were sentenced to terms in a federal penitentiary. They later received dishonorable discharges and reductions in rank. More than 50 years later, Assemblyman Roderick Wright, D-Los Angeles, is hoping to re-establish the men's good names and reputations.

"We want our dignity restored in the name of the United States government," Wright said just a few hours after introducing a resolution in the Assembly calling on Clinton to clear the convictions from the Port Chicago sailors' records.

After stepping haltingly off a bus into a stiff wind raking Suisun Bay, the survivors described a harrowing scene on that warm summer night when 10,000 tons of ammunition destined for the Pacific front exploded, sending a fireball into the air. The blasts were equal to half the force of the bomb dropped a year later on Hiroshima and could be felt by Port Chicago sailor Spencer Sykes, who was on a date at an Oakland movie house.

"The building shook," he remembered while standing on the granite memorial that overlooks the shattered dock pilings and marks the site of the tragedy. "You just felt it, a roaring and rocking. We were ordered to return to the base, and you have never seen so much chaos."

Other men remembered just settling in for the night at the barracks, including Robert Routh, who was lying on his bunk when the first of two explosions hit.

"It looked like the Fourth of July," said Routh, who was blinded by flying glass. "I thought we were being bombed. My eyes were so badly lacerated, there was no pain."

The exact cause of the disaster remains a mystery. Speculation runs from a nuclear bomb to a Japanese submarine. But many of the sailors were improperly trained to handle explosives, and white officers made the situation worse by betting their battalions could load the ships the fastest.

Claude "Duke" Ellington, who worked at Port Chicago that summer, said he believes the 50 men tried for mutiny served as a much- needed scapegoat.

"Those guys were picked out," he added. "They were fall guys for the explosion."

Several Bay Area politicians, including U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, tried in 1994 and 1995 to convince the military and the Clinton administration to expunge the sailors' records. But then-Secretary of Defense William Perry, concurring with his secretary of the Navy, concluded there was not enough evidence to do so.

This time, the survivors hope the issue goes directly to the Oval Office. Robert Allen, a University of California at Berkeley professor who first documented the hidden racism of the Port Chicago explosion, said yesterday he hopes President Clinton won't "pass the buck" again.

"I hope this will finally reach the president's desk in a way that he can't ignore," Allen said. "All it takes is the stroke of a pen. It's no loss to him, no loss to the Navy to do this."

A Navy spokesman in Arlington, Va., did not return calls seeking comment.

Wright said he hopes any action taken by state lawmakers will be endorsed by Congress because "the ultimate resolution for this will occur in Washington."

Men like Routh, who suffered permanent disability, or Robinson, who doubts his record will ever be cleared, spoke without anger. They talked, 50 years later, with awe of the destruction, still a vivid, searing mental image.

"Coming back today brought back many memories," said Sykes, who also served in the Korean War and has always loved the sea. "Memories are like the waves of the ocean; they come and go but never cease."